Chapter Twenty-Nine

I had just about made it through Georgia when I heard the news.

I’d spent the night in Hinesville, a few miles south of Savannah. I pulled off the highway in need of a night’s sleep and, even more, a shower, and drove until I found a motel that looked even sleepier than me. The woman who checked me in seemed as anxious to get back to the tea she was brewing as I was to avoid her direct sight. Ten minutes later I was bathed and gone to the world, a King of Queens rerun on the TV. Glad to just be in a bed after two nights. When I woke up, the housekeeper was knocking on the door. It was close to ten. The news was on, Libyan Rebels Advancing on the Capital of Tripoli. I closed my eyes again, wondering if I’d hear an update about me.

What came on almost sent me into cardiac arrest.

“Florida double homicide suspect purchased a nine-millimeter murder handgun at North Carolina gun show.”

I shot up in bed, as a pretty, down-home anchorwoman told the world how on March 2, only three weeks ago, I had bought a Heckler & Koch 9mm handgun, apparently the same gun that killed both Martinez and Mike, from a local dealer at a gun show in North Carolina.

I leaped out of the bed and put my face close to the screen.

What I saw was a supposed bill of sale from an outfit called Bud’s Guns, in Mount Holly. The report claimed that the weapon had been paid for in cash at the Mid-Carolina Gun Fair almost three weeks earlier, which, it explained, avoided the requirement for a more detailed background check and ID.

My heart almost came up my throat. I’d never been to a gun show in my life! And I’d only been to North Carolina once in the past several years, to Duke University, for a conference on rebuilding facial bone structure.

But there it was. My name on the invoice. My address in Palm Beach. Having paid cash, as if I was trying to avoid detection. Three weeks ago. Before the murders. For the entire world to see!

If there was even a sliver of hope that someone might believe me that I wasn’t guilty, that was now dashed. My mind flashed to Carrie Holmes. It had taken everything just to convince her that the Amherst incident had been twisted maliciously.

What would she be thinking now?

I reached over to the night table and found one of my disposable phones.

This was part of the setup! It had to be. How could someone have my name and address on a bill of sale, buying the identical gun used in the killings, three weeks before the crime? How would anyone have known I’d be in Jacksonville? How would anyone have planted me there?

Suddenly the truth settled into me and my eyes went wide.

The sonovabitch who had been orchestrating this whole thing, who had Hallie . . . he’d been planning it for weeks.

How? . . . Why?

I turned off the TV and sat back in a daze, mentally rewinding through everything that had happened since the moment I’d arrived in Jacksonville two days before.

Martinez pulling me over; ordering me out of my car; telling me I was going to jail. All those questions, as if I’d committed some serious crime. As if they were hunting someone.

And Mike. How would anyone have known about him? Or put us together? That that was where I’d head in a panic? My head was throbbing. Who? Why? Were Martinez and Mike killed merely to make it appear that I was a murderer?

But then I suddenly realized, the bastard had gone one step too far.

I took the phone and punched in the number for the sheriff’s office. Carrie had told me not to call her. But I had to. By now, I was damn sure she thought I was guiltier than ever. Everyone would. My heart began to race as I waited for the call to go through. Finally, a receptionist answered.

“Carrie Holmes . . .” I said.

A fear kicked up that she was probably waiting for me. They probably had a trace set up as soon as they heard my call. It might even be a trap. A plant. Knowing I’d call in. I couldn’t blame her now.

And I didn’t care. I didn’t care if the cops barged in here right now and took me away. I just wanted one fucking person in this world to believe me. As long as I had one person to help me clear my name . . .

“Community Outreach. Carrie Hol—”

“I didn’t do it, Carrie!” I didn’t give her a second to interrupt. “I don’t care what it looks like. I don’t care how it makes me seem. I didn’t buy that gun. I’ve never been to a gun show. Someone is setting me up, Carrie. That’s what I couldn’t tell you the other day. Why I couldn’t turn myself in.

“But this time I’m pretty sure I can prove it!”

Chapter Thirty

Raef had been put to bed a half hour ago, and Carrie sat with her father over a beer on the screened-in sunporch.

She thought of her dad as a canny old codger. Actually, not old at all. At seventy-two, Nate still maintained a fit and trim physique—an ex–navy fighter pilot and a small-town police chief in New Hampshire for twenty-two years. And out of everyone else she knew, he was usually the wisest, and the one whose perspective always mattered the most. In her gym shorts and flip-flops, Carrie curled a leg up on the wicker rocking chair and faced him, gently shifting the subject from his dim view of Florida’s football chances this year. The June bugs were buzzing all around the modest, three-bedroom ranch that looked out over an islet, a couple of blocks off the beach.

“Dad, there’s something I have to go over with you . . . Don’t answer till I finish. Okay? Then say what you want.”

He put down his beer and nodded, knowing this was her way of broaching a serious subject. “Okay . . .”

She told him everything. Her doubts about Henry Steadman’s guilt from the start. How nothing quite added up. No motive. No weapon. How he had called 911. That she knew there was some crucial piece of information that he was withholding. The way he begged her to help him. Only her.

She waited to gauge his reaction.

“Finished?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

She told him how Steadman had called her a second time yesterday. How she’d had some misgivings, and then doubts about her misgivings, which made her father, the ex–police chief, wince, and his eyes registered the seriousness of her involvement.

Then she let out a deep breath herself and admitted how she had tracked down the suspicious blue car Steadman was so obsessed with. The one she could now prove was at both crime scenes.

That was when her dad’s nonjudging eyes widened.

Then she told him about the gun receipt in North Carolina, and that it didn’t sway her either.

“He claims he wasn’t anywhere near North Carolina that day. And that he can prove it. Look, Dad, I know how this all sounds. I know I’ve broken a few rules. But someone’s setting him up. Someone’s gone to an awful lot of trouble to pin these crimes on him, and put him in the middle of something. Nobody wants to hear it, and I’m not sure what to do. Everyone’s already got him convicted, and the news about the gun purchase only solidified their view.”

Nate nodded, leaning forward, forearms on his thighs. “Is there more? Can I take a sip of beer now?”

“Yeah, take a sip of beer.” Carrie sighed. “There is more, but I don’t want to completely ruin my case right from the start.”

Nate curled a smile, but only slightly. “So what is it you want to know? What I would do if I found out someone on my staff who wasn’t even part of my investigative team was having discussions on her own with the suspect and withholding evidence on the case?”